"There Is a Tide in the Affairs of Men":
Robert Prechter, Elliott Wave Theory, and Voluntaryism
By Carl Watner
[Editor's Note: This article
was started in early February 2009, after the election of Obama, after
world stock markets had lost some $ 32 trillion dollars in value, and
before the great stimulus package had been hammered out. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average stood just above 8,000. It will likely be posted
on the worldwide web in the next few months. However, subscribers will
probably not read it in their newsletters until sometime in 2010. Please
keep this dating in mind, just in case the economic and political conditions
under which it was written change, either for the better or the worse.]
Can
you identify the author and the date of publication of the following
book excerpt:
An increase in
the supply of money [and credit] depends mainly upon borrowing. Unless
the psychology of the American consumer can be turned around, consumers
will not start new borrowing that will create more new money. Until
consumers start to demand more and buy more, business will not expand
more. Therefore business will not borrow more. Therefore, in spite of
the great increase in the money supply caused by the Federal deficits,
the total money supply will continue to shrink. As it shrinks it will
bring about bankruptcies, and these bankruptcies will cause others,
which will end in a great domino display of deflation. The destruction
of money will far outpace the manufacture of money by the Fed, and we
shall be plunged into the worst depression in the history of the world.
[1]
Any guesses: Murray Rothbard,
AMERICA'S GREAT DEPRESSION, 1963; Harry Browne, HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM
THE COMING DEVALUATION, 1970; Alexander Paris, THE COMING CREDIT COLLAPSE,
1974; James Dines, THE INVISIBLE CRASH, 1975; C. V. Myers, THE COMING
DEFLATION, 1976; Robert Prechter, AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL WAVE, 1995,
and CONQUER THE CRASH, 2002; Roger Bootle, THE DEATH OF INFLATION, 1996,
and MONEY FOR NOTHING, 2003; Nouriel Roubini and Brad Setser, BAILOUTS
OR BAIL-INS, 2004? Well, you had no idea there were so many doomsday
Cassandras, did you? If you guessed Robert Prechter (because he is mentioned
in my subtitle), you were wrong. The quote is actually from C.V. Myers,
whose biography, FIFTY YEARS IN THE FURNACE (1989), I reviewed in December
1990, in Whole Number 47.
Now what was the point of this little quiz? It simply is to observe
that there have been a number of economists and investment advisors
who predicted a second Great Depression. Every one of these authors
recognized that "every financial mania in history has been followed
by a commensurate bust," but only two or three of them were so
astute as to get their timing close to the event. [2] Myers, as we can
see, was thirty-two years ahead of his time. Of the list I presented,
only Bootle, Roubini, and Prechter were within ten years of an accurate
prediction. Of these three, not only is Bob Prechter a long-time subscriber
to THE VOLUNTARYIST, but he is the only one to have fleshed out a theory
of mass human behavior which links human emotions and psychology to
the credit booms and busts we have recently experienced.
How
did Bob Prechter become the world's best known advocate of Elliott wave
theory, one of the few economists to anticipate a deflationary depression,
and a voluntaryist, to boot? Born in 1949, Bob is father of two grown
children. He attended Yale University on a full scholarship and graduated
in 1971 with a degree in psychology. After an interlude as a drummer
in a rock band, he joined Merrill Lynch as a market technician in 1975.
His father was a student of finance and the stock market, and on his
dad's advice, Bob invested in South African gold stocks a year after
his graduation. Within sixteen months he had quintupled his money and
he was drawn inexorably toward the stock market as a career. (It appeared
potentially more profitable than making music.) While at Merrill Lynch,
a friend gave him a "barely readable photocopy of Hamilton Bolton's
1960 book" about Ralph Nelson Elliott, who had charted stock prices
throughout the Great Depression. [3] Elliott (1871-1948) was a professional
accountant who had worked in the restaurant industry and for the U.S.
State Department in Nicaragua during the 1920s. While recovering from
a serious illness, he discovered the fractal nature of stock prices.
He subsequently wrote two books, a series of articles, and over 100
newsletters describing the wave-like structures he observed in his research.
Bob found Elliott's theory intriguing because of his own personal interest
in human psychology, and because no other theory of market behavior
had ever come close to matching the accuracy of the forecasts of the
Elliott Wave Principle. Prechter began charting stock prices himself,
and eventually teamed up with A. J. Frost, another Elliottician, in
1978, to co-author THE ELLIOTT WAVE PRINCIPLE. This is "the only
book in stock market history" to have forecast not only a great
bull market but its subsequent complete retracement. [4] Part 2 of that
forecast seems to be happening now. Prechter later developed his thesis
of a deflationary depression in his 1995 book, AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL
WAVE: A Forecast for the Great Bear Market, and in his 2002 book, CONQUER
THE CRASH: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression.
In
1976, while at Merrill Lynch, Bob began writing THE ELLIOTT WAVE REPORTS
for the firm. In 1979, he left to start his own publication, THE ELLIOTT
WAVE THEORIST. In 1982, THE ELLIOTT WAVE THEORIST called "for the
Dow to rise 3000 points from the 900 level." [5] By 1985, his publication
was on its way to becoming the premier, must-read investment newsletter
on Wall Street. This came about as a result of word of mouth interest,
but also because of Bob's success in the 1984 options trading division
of the U.S. Trading Championship contest. He poured his efforts into
the competition, and at the end of the 4 month trials, his account was
up 444%. "At the time, it was the highest score in the history
of the contest." [6] About 90% of his financial predictions between
1983 and 1988 were right on the mark. In December 1989, Financial News
Network named him "Guru of the Decade."
However,
not all his forecasts were to be so prescient. Despite his earlier successes,
and his continued accuracy in forecasting gold and silver (all his commentary
appears in HOW TO FORECAST GOLD AND SILVER USING THE WAVE PRINCIPLE),
between 1991 and 1999, his stock market predictions were well off the
mark.
[A]fter exiting
near the [stock market] high in 1987, I concluded after the crash that
the bull market was probably over and did not re-enter the market. Even
after the market made new highs, the advent of the new horde of green
investors, who were buying stocks like catfish in a feeding frenzy,
kept me too cautious to recommend buying the market as a whole. [7]
As Bob puts it, the duration
of waves is the least predictable element in Wave Principle forecasting,
but that doesn't necessarily destroy its truth or effectiveness. What
the Wave Principle "provides [is] an objective means of assessing
the relative probabilities of possible future paths for the market."
[8] The Wave Principle unequivocally encouraged him to stick to his
guns, even if his timing was years early in predicting disaster. In
fact, that is one personality trait that had been with him for years.
"[W]hile attending summer school [in his teens] with the Georgia
Governor's Honor Program, [he] was given a psychological test and told
that one of [his] skewed traits was 'tough-mindedness.'" From his
adult perspective this was a benefit: if you think the stock market
crowd is on a binge and about to stampede over the cliff, the time to
depart is well before it reaches the precipice. Better a year too early,
than a day late. [9]
Bob's interest in Elliott was undoubtedly sparked by his college studies
in psychology, As Bob describes himself:
I am an observer
of crowd behavior. ... In my opinion, all history flows from the truth
that men have a nature, that this nature produces patterns of interaction,
and that these patterns of interactions produce results. Elliott broke
major ground in the field of sociology when he showed that behavioral
patterns inherent in human interaction shape financial events. I would
add that they shape all collective events and trends. [10]
"Ralph Nelson Elliott's
great insight," was that "financial markets have a specific
organizational law of patterned self-similarity," and that "social
or crowd behavior trends and reverses in recognizable patterns."
[11] He identified 13 patterns or waves that recurred in the market
data he studied during and after the Great Depression. Mankind's progress,
he noted, is not in a straight line, but neither does it occur randomly
or cyclically, "Rather progress takes place in a three steps forward,
two steps back fashion, a form that nature prefers." [12] "In
the biggest imaginable picture the trend is always up, according to
the Wave Principle. Mankind is on an upward path, with corrections along
the way as he moves through history." [13]
Prechter,
building on Elliott's work, recognized that there must exist an unconscious
herding impulse within humanity that impels trends in social mood.
He proposes that this herding impulse is central to the working
of the economy and valuations in the stock market. The herding instincts
of early man are still apparent in today's world. "Herding is an
unconscious impulsive behavior developed and maintained through evolution."
[14] The knowledge that others'
investment decisions can determine their own success or failure creates
an environment of uncertainty, in which people are ripe for taking
cues for their own actions from others. "Herding induces feelings
of safety and well-being" so investors whether buying or selling
with the herd "are always acting unconsciously to reduce risks,
thanks to the emotionally satisfying impulse to herd." When
humans do not know what to do "they sometimes act as if others
do, and follow them as if following the herd" - even though "they
don't realize that most others in the herd are just as uninformed, ignorant,
and uncertain as they are." Herding occurs in a rising stock market.
Buyer's think, "'The herd must know where the food is. Run with
the herd and you will prosper.' Sellers in a falling market appear to
think, 'The herd must know there is a lion racing toward us. Run with
the herd or you will die.'" [15]
Combining
observations from both sociology and economics, Prechter has developed
a theory of socionomics to explain the relationships between the stock
market, society, popular culture, and government. His basic "socionomic"
insight is that social events do not shape social mood, but rather the
herding impulse and social mood shape events. "Major historic events
which are often considered important to the future (i.e., economic activity,
lawmaking, war) are not the causes of change; they are the result of
mass mood changes that have already occurred." [16] The market
does not respond to outside events, such as natural disasters, the outcome
of political elections, revolutions, or wars. Rather, "collective
psychology is impulsive, self-generating, self-sustaining, and self-reversing.
... Events that make history are the result of mass mental states that
take time to develop. This is the only possible explanation for the
constancy of structure and consistency of pattern that markets reveal."
[17]
Prechter
points out that most people believe that history shapes social mood,
whereas the truth is exactly the opposite: collective mood shapes history.
The stock market, in which people can express their moods nearly instantaneously,
is a register of social mood and the mass emotional outlook. In other
words, the stock market goes down because people's mood has changed
from optimistic to pessimistic. "An increasingly optimistic populace
buys stocks and increases its productive endeavors. An increasingly
pessimistic populace sells stocks and reduces its productive endeavors."
[18] "The cause of future events is changes in the mass emotional
outlook. That ... comes first. ... People's emotional states cause them
to behave in ways that ultimately affect economic statistics and politics."
[19] For the overall social mood to change, "all that is required
is for some particularly susceptible people to undergo a substantial
change in mood, and/or for most people to undergo some
[small] change in mood." [20]
This
interpretation of mass psychology and financial events is particularly
applicable to today's debate among free market advocates as to whether
deflation or inflation will rule the day. As one commentator has calculated:
the world stock market has lost $ 30 trillion in value during the last
year; the world housing market has suffered a net loss of another $
30 trillion. "This doesn't even include the losses from other asset
classes that have been decimated, such as corporate bonds, commodities,
and commercial real estate." [21]
Can
the United States government and the Federal Reserve in Washington jump
start the economy - even with a trillion here or a trillion there, when
worldwide losses are of such a magnitude? Furthermore, how effective
can the government be in changing social mood? Despite what most
people think, government officials do not affect trends; they only react
to them. Prechter's observations are confirmed by the Japanese experience
of the last two decades. Neither the Bank of Japan or the Japanese Ministry
of Economics have been able to "inflate" their economy out
of its doldrums. [22] Is it true, as most people believe, that
Federal Reserve officials really know what they are doing? Prechter
says they don't, and labels this popular belief (that they can "direct"
the economy) the fallacy of the potent director. [23] Treasury Department
and Federal Reserve officials cannot force banks to lend, nor
people to borrow if everyone is pessimistic about the future of the
economy.
Based
on the Wave Principle, Prechter has forecasted a second Great Depression
based on the peaking of a wave of a very large size. Never before has
an Elliottician been alive to [witness] the termination of a wave structure
of this magnitude, when all fifth wave cycles terminate at the same
time. Elliott Wave analysis supports the fact that during the last two
centuries, the various fifth waves have unfolded according to the rules
and guidelines of the Wave Principle. This is a strong indication that
the biggest bear market since the 1700s is a reality, and gives credence
to Prechter's ongoing prediction that the Dow Jones Industrial Average
will fall back below 1000, and probably to below 400. [24]
As
Prechter sees it, the inflation of the past hundred years has been "not
primarily currency inflation but credit inflation." [25] The entire
world has been on a credit binge based on the marriage of three institutions:
fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and government subsidies for
the creation of credit. Gold and silver have gradually disappeared from
our monetary system, and have been replaced by irredeemable legal tender
paper money. Government legislation and court decisions have built up
a system of central banks in every country that operate on miniscule
reserves (hence the name, fractional reserve banking). Government and
corporate borrowing, housing and real estate mortgages, and personal
loans have reached all-time nominal highs, as governments have tried
to "buy" public support. The ability of governments, individuals,
and corporations to repay their debts is now at all time lows. If borrowers
pay back their loans without renewing them, or if borrowers default
on their loans, the approximate 600 to 1 fractional reserve multiplier
(i.e., for every $ 1 loaned into existence, another $ 600 may be created)
goes into a devastating reverse gear. [26] Printed currency stays
in the system, but inflated credit can implode upon itself. "Total
credit will contract, so bank deposits will contract, so the supply
of money will contract, all with the same degree of
[reverse] leverage with which they were initially expanded. Th[is]
immense reverse credit leverage of zero-reserve (actually negative-reserve)
banking, then, is the primary fuel for a deflationary crash." [27]
As Prechter concludes, "Credit deflation is the most devastating
financial event of all." [28]
Of
the three items listed in our sub-title to this article, we have discussed
Bob Prechter and Elliott Wave theory but what of their relation to voluntaryism?
Why should a voluntaryist be interested in these topics, and why should
Bob Prechter be a voluntaryist?
As
Prechter explains it, initially he was influenced by his father's support
of limited government. Then he began to see government's negative influence
in the running of the courts, the police, and the military. Eventually
he reached the point where he could declare himself "100% for voluntaryism."
[29] As an example of this, in 1995, in AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL WAVE,
he wrote:
The only sound monetary
system is a voluntary one. ... [P]rices should be denominated not in
state fictions, such as dollars, yen, or francs, but in grams of gold.
Anyone might issue promissory notes as currency, but the acceptance
of such certificates would then be an individual decision, and risk
of loss through imprudence or dishonesty would be borne only by a few
individuals by their own conscious choice after considering the risks.
... Thievery and imprudence will not disappear among men, but
at least such tendencies in a free market for money would not have the
potential to be institutionalized, as they are when a state controls
the currency. ... [N]ationwide disasters that state controlled money
has facilitated throughout history ... have ... had global repercussions.
[30]
A year later in his book, PRECHTER'S
PERSPECTIVE, he again wrote that "The only way to guarantee that
politicians will never again inflate is to introduce private money
and ban legal tender laws." The production of money would be open
to "anyone that wants to issue it! The marketplace will choose
the soundest forms of money, and competition will insure that they are
produced." [31]
Prechter
has also blasted the idea that "a growing economy needs easy credit."
As he puts it, a growing economy needs wise credit, not easy money.
Wise credit can never be administered by those in government. "Credit
should be supplied by the free market, in which case it will almost
always be offered intelligently, primarily to producers, not consumers.
Would lower levels of credit availability mean that fewer people would
own a house or a car? Quite the opposite. Only the timeline would be
different. Initially it would take a few years longer for the same number
of people to own their own houses and cars - actually
own, not rent them from the banks. Because banks would not be appropriating
so much of everyone's labor and wealth, the economy would grow much
faster. Eventually the extent of home and car ownership -actual
ownership - would eclipse that of an easy credit society. Moreover,
people would keep their homes and cars because banks would not
be foreclosing on them. As a bonus, there would be no devastating across-the-board
collapse of the banking system, which history has repeatedly demonstrated
is inevitable under a central bank's fiat-credit monopoly." [32]
Despite
his support for free markets in money and banking, Prechter has noted
that "none of this had to do with Elliott waves or socionomics."
Nevertheless, he believes that both are compatible with liberty. They
remove "the essential crutch upon which government meddling stands:
the idea that social events can change the mood of the public."
It would appear that all governments need to do to succeed is to manipulate
events, to improve the public's mood. "But social mood is endogenously
regulated, which means that no [government] can change its path."
[33] In other words, Prechter believes that the "collective
unconscious herding impulse cannot be tamed, directed, or managed."
[34] This means that government propaganda will be nearly ineffectual
and explains why in George Orwell's 1984
those in government left the proles to their own designs. "As the
Party slogan put it: 'Proles and animals are free'." [35]
What
is the connection between Elliott wave theory, socionomics, and voluntaryism?
As Prechter has explained, the "actions of central authorities
are irrelevant to whatever is essential to market behavior", which
means they are irrelevant to social mood.
People today almost
unanimously agree that government[s] ....have potent and magic powers
to shape macroeconomic forces. The cause of this error is once again
the belief in extramarket causality. In fact, it is the interaction
of millions of people that sets interest rates and regulates the economy.
The power of financial "authorities" to manage markets and
economies is like the power of the Wizard of Oz: smoke and bluster.
... [I]f there is any result at all, ... [it] is to make things worse.
[Attempts at control misdirect energy and resources.] Complexity theory
recognizes nature's processes of self organization. It is a short
step to realize that society operates the same way. That is why
free societies are more successful and productive than controlled ones.
They self organize far more efficiently than any human directors could
make them do. [36]
So if the actions of government authorities are futile and irrelevant,
then they must be unnecessary to the survival of a free society. The
lessons are clear: political institutions steal from people; they are
ultimately disastrous; and government policies, no matter how well intentioned,
make things worse. But why does history repeat itself? Why do we keep
having government institutions rule us? Why hasn't mankind learned from
its past? Prechter answered these questions long before he was a voluntaryist.
He noted that it is one of nature's laws that mankind will refuse
to recognize and willingly accept all of nature's laws. In fact, this
is part of the reason for the very existence of the Elliott Wave Principle:
mankind refuses to learn from its own past. Some men can always be counted
on to believe that two and two make five; that man can consume before
he produces; that special cases exempt men from nature's laws; that
what is lent never need be paid back; that paper is as good as gold;
that benefits have no cost; and that the fears which reason supports
will evaporate if they are ignored or derided. [37]
This being
the case, is there any reason for optimism? "Yes, continually!"
Prechter responds. Knowing that social mood is patterned allows you
to anticipate all kinds of social trends, which means you can prosper
in any financial environment, or even escape from life-threatening social
troubles before they arrive. In other words, Prechter's theory of Socionomics
provides a rational and practical approach to harness and benefit from
Shakespeare's famous observation:
There
is a tide in the affairs of men
Which,
taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted,
all the voyage of their life
Is
bound in shallows and in miseries.
On
such a full sea are we now afloat,
And
we must take the current when it serves
Or
lose our ventures.
Then,
with your will go on. [38]
Boxed Quotes to Accompany This
Article:
When the bottom
dropped out of the stock market, the wealthy were hit first. But it
wasn't long before the Depression came sweeping through our little town.
"The banks went broke and closed their doors. It was hard to believe
that the money we'd saved there was really gone."
- Cecil Culp in WE HAD
EVERYTHING BUT MONEY
(Deb Mulvey, editor, Greendale: Reiman Publications,
1992, p. 14).
There are two ways that credit
can be liquidated. The first can be by inflation, by increasing the
amount of money and credit in existence, so that the value or purchasing
power of each unit of money is thereby diminished. A debt of $ 500,
which originally would have bought one ounce of gold, is paid off with
$ 500 inflated dollars with a purchasing power of 1/100 of the original,
of which $ 500 inflated dollars will buy only 1/100th of an ounce of
gold. Or the "second way massive debt can be liquidated is through
bankruptcy. That is to say, default. A man lent a hundred dollars. The
debtor goes broke and says to the man simply, 'I'm sorry - I can't pay
you back - I don't have any money'. ... [This] means deflation; that
is bankruptcy and depression."
- Paraphrased and quoted from C. V.
Myers, THE COMING DEFLATION
(New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1976 [1978], pp. 33-34).
End Notes
[1] C. V. Myers, THE COMING
DEFLATION (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1976, Twelfth Printing, August
1978), pp. 199-200.
[2] Robert R. Prechter, Jr.,
PRECHTER'S GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE, January 2009, p. 11.
[3] Peter Kendall, ed., Robert
R. Prechter, Jr., PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE (Gainesville: New Classics
Library, 1996), p. 8.
[4] Frost and Prechter, ELLIOTT
WAVE PRINCIPLE (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 1978, First
paperback edition November 2000), p. 239.
[5] Robert R. Prechter, Jr.,
AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL WAVE (Gainesville: New Classics Library, 1995),
p. 13. In August 1982, the Dow touched down at 777; by the summer of
1987 it was up to 2700.
[6] PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE,
op. cit., p. 18.
[7] AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL
WAVE, op. cit., p. 203.
[8] Elliott Wave International,
"A Capsule Summary of the Wave Principle," (2008), p. 2. Referenced
as "Capsule Summary" in later footnotes.
[9] PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE,
op. cit., p. 102 and AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL WAVE, op. cit., p. 216.
[10] PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE,
op. cit., p. 24.
[11] Robert R. Prechter, Jr.,
THE WAVE PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF SOCIONOMICS
(Gainesville: New Classics Library, 1999, Second Printing 2002). p.
6. Also see "Capsule Summary," op. cit., p. 1.
[12] "Capsule Summary,"
op. cit., p. 3.
[13] PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE,
op. cit., Frontispiece quoting Robert Prechter.
[14] Robert R. Prechter and
Wayne D. Parker, "The Financial/Economic Dichotomy in Social Behavioral
Dynamics: The Socionomic Perspective," being an electronic version
of an article published in THE JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL FINANCE, Vol. 8,
No. 2, pp. 84-108. Page 11 of the electronic version published by Socionomics
Foundation, 2009.
[15] ibid., pp. 11-12.
[16] Robert R. Prechter, Jr.,
PIONEERING STUDIES IN SOCIONOMICS (Gainesville: New Classics Library,
2003), p. 4. Also see "The Direction of Social Causality,"
in THE WAVE PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF
SOCIONOMICS, op. cit., pp. 329-330.
[17] PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE,
op. cit., p. 35.
[18] Robert R. Prechter, Jr.,
CONQUER THE CRASH (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2002), p. 18.
[19] PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE,
op. cit., pp. 183-184.
[20] PIONEERING STUDIES IN
SOCIONOMICS, op. cit., p. 5.
[21] Eric Sprott and Sasha
Solunac, "So You Think 2008 Was Bad? Welcome to 2009," Posted
February 4, 2009 at www.321gold.com/editorials/sprott/sprott020409.html,
page 3.
[22] "But in the early
1990s, the authorities found they could no longer create inflation."
See Akio Mikuni and R. Taggart Murphy, JAPAN'S POLICY TRAP: Dollars,
Deflation, and the Crisis of Japanese Finance (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press, 2002), p. 168. See further development of this point
in Footnote 13 to this sentence on pp. 273-274.
[23] CONQUER THE CRASH, op.
cit., p. 123, and AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL WAVE, op. cit., p. 217.
[24] AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL
WAVE, op. cit., pp. 30, 41, and 409.
[25] ROBERT PRECHTER'S MOST
IMPORTANT WRITINGS ON DEFLATION, Excerpted from the June 16, 2006 ELLIOTT
WAVE THEORIST, p. 37.
[26] See ROBERT PRECHTER'S
MOST IMPORTANT WRITINGS ON DEFLATION, November 17, 2005 ELLIOTT
WAVE THEORIST, pp. 29-30.
[27] CONQUER THE CRASH, op.
cit., p. 111.
[28] ROBERT PRECHTER'S MOST
IMPORTANT WRITINGS ON DEFLATION, Excerpted from the March 23, 2007 ELLIOTT
WAVE THEORIST, p. 41.
[29] Personal email communication
from Robert Prechter, November 2, 2008.
[30] AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL
WAVE, op. cit., p. 359.
[31] PRECHTER'S PERSPECTIVE,
op. cit., pp. 194-195.
[32] ROBERT PRECHTER'S MOST
IMPORTANT WRITINGS ON DEFLATION, Excerpted from the February 20 2004
THE ELLIOTT WAVE THEORIST, p. 27.
[33] Personal email communication
from Robert Prechter, January 7, 2009.
[34] ROBERT PRECHTER'S MOST
IMPORTANT WRITINGS ON DEFLATION,
Excerpted from the June 16,
2006 ELLIOTT WAVE THEORIST, p. 38.
[35] George Orwell, 1984
(New York: The New American Library, 28th Printing, December 1962),
Part I, Section VII, p. 62.
[36] THE WAVE PRINCIPLE OF
HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF SOCIONOMICS, op. cit.,
p. 369.
[37] ELLIOTT WAVE PRINCIPLE,
op. cit., pp. 169-170.
[38] AT THE CREST OF THE TIDAL
WAVE, op. cit., pp. 11 and 21. Taken from JULIUS CAESAR, Act IV, Scene
3.